The present invention relates to an electronic digital bathroom scale, specifically to a programmable digital scale that measures weight and also provides the user with personalized weight management information.
Weight control has become a modern obsession. It is virtually a national pastime in the United States, where many tens of millions of Americans struggle daily with diets and exercise programs. Some are motivated by a desire to live a healthier lifestyle. Others are driven by a need to alleviate anxiety about personal appearance.
Digital scales are an important tool used by many in a program of weight control or management. Most digital scales known in the art do little more than measure and display a user""s current weight using a digital measurement technology instead of a conventional mechanical measurement technology, such as a strain gauge. Other prior art digital scales may display additional information, such as recent weight loss or gain, or a calorie counter. However, the digital scales known in the art are generally ineffective in providing the individual with a full range of information useful to a successful program of weight control or management.
Many persons managing their weight need to know more than their current weight. For example, a safe weight control program usually begins with baseline information about the average expected range of weight for a particular person""s body type. Many people may think they are either overweight or underweight, when in fact their weight may be normal for their age, height, sex, and frame type. Therefore, it would be desirable for a digital scale to give a person information about the desired weight range for a person of his or her body type.
Additionally, in order to measure progress, a person must keep a record of how his or her weight is changing over time. The reason for this is partly motivational. A record serves as a measure of progress and provides a person with feedback about their weight control program. However, an individual will typically write dates and weight measurements on a piece of paper that can be misplaced or discarded. Even if the handwritten record survives, the person is left with raw weight data and nothing more. Accordingly, it would be desirable for a digital scale to keep a record of a person""s weight changes and convert that data into something more empirically useful, such as a historical graph of weight change over time or a record of the percent change in weight over a certain period.
An effective weight control program also usually includes control over the number of calories consumed. For example, people need specific guidance as to the number of calories that should be consumed to achieve, for example, weight loss of one pound a week. Once a person has attained a desired weight, he or she will want to know the number of calories to consume in order to maintain that weight. The appropriate number of calories, however, often changes over time, and few people are diligent enough to keep proper account of how calorie consumption should change given changes in weight. Charts and reference books offer some guidance, but any sort of research requires time that many people find hard to set aside. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a digital scale that displays such information for a user.
Although several prior art digital scales have attempted to provide one or more of these types of information to the user, there exists a need in the art for a scale that provides the user with several of these types of user-specific weight management information.
An exemplary embodiment of the present invention overcomes the above-described problems by providing a programmable microprocessor-controlled digital scale capable of storing profiles of multiple users and respective user-specific weight management information. A software program executed by the microprocessor creates and stores a user profile for each user. The user profile contains, for example, information about each user""s age, sex, height, and body frame type. The software program also generates user-specific weight control information based on the user""s profile and weight, and displays the information to the user. The generated user-specific weight control information can include, for example: current weight; absolute as well as percentage change in weight; graph of the minimum and maximum weight for the average person matching the user""s profile; a thirty day rolling graph of the user""s weight history; information about the number of calories that should be consumed in order to either maintain weight, or lose one pound per week; and body fat measurements.